A Televised Debate for House Speaker Is an Unspeakably Bad Idea

So, this is an absolutely terrible idea:

Punchbowl News reporter Jake Sherman added that the “speaker debate WILL BE televised,” though it is unclear as of yet whether it will be pre-taped or broadcast live. And while it will not be open to the press, reporters will be “allowed in the room” to document the event.

This is an irremediably ill-conceived plan. Nothing good can come of it. It should not happen.

The Constitution dictates that the House “shall chuse [sic] their Speaker and other officers,” and that is all it says. The process is closed and reserved for its members alone. Insofar as it is possible to do so, the process of jockeying for leadership should be insulated from the distorting effects of and perverse incentives associated with electoral politics. What is the purpose of a televised debate between candidates for the Speaker other than to give the narrowest band of plugged-in partisan Republican voters influence over the outcome of the race for House leadership?

This television program absolutely will influence that process. It will be covered in the press. There will be point-scoring and analyses of the winners and losers. The small-dollar donations it produces will become a proximate metric for a candidate’s relative success. And the subjects tackled by aspirants for the speakership are almost certain to be the stuff that enthralls cable news watchers – most likely, at the expense of the mundanities that keep the government’s lights on. This radical act of transparency will reduce the incentives to behave in ways conducive to coalition building, compromise, and governance. It will produce a food fight that makes it more likely the next speaker will be a bomb thrower rather than a bridge builder.

Speakers have many tools at their disposal to grease the legislative skids. They can dispense favors, dole out committee assignments, and schedule legislative priorities to encourage the cooperation of their members. They can withhold these beneficences, too, if coercion is required. Indeed, the biggest question before House Republicans now isn’t who occupies the speakership but the rules to which they will consent in order to secure the post. Will the new speaker consent to being constrained by the same set of conditions that cost McCarthy his speakership and ensured that his nine-month tenure was defined by rolling crises and factionalism? If this TV show goes forward, the answer is almost certainly yes. The skills a political actor needs to navigate a forum like this are precisely the opposite of those that make for an effective manager of an unwieldy majority coalition in the lower chamber of Congress.

The race for leadership within Congress’s respective chambers is not designed to be small-“d” democratic. Indeed, it should not be. Our input in this process is neither solicited nor especially desirable. Deal-making of the sort that makes for competent, effective governance while preserving the fragile egos of the chambers’ members is done behind closed doors. In that sense, opacity is a necessary prerequisite for the proper administration of public affairs. Voters select their representatives; they do not get much of a say in the courses of action those representatives take as determined by their judgment — a judgment based on the circumstances only those members can assess accurately because they are closest to them. In the pursuit of programming, content, and, above all, entertainment, we are now assigning responsibilities to voters they were never supposed to assume and lack the information necessary to navigate. All poisons are determined by the dose, and too much democracy is just as lethal to a republic as too little.

In all likelihood, the “winner” of this debate will secure his victory at the cost of his efficacy in the role he seeks. If the chamber’s members hope to get anything done for the rest of this Congress, they should hope this event does not happen. But maybe doing the work of government isn’t the job anymore. Not, at least, if the business of legislating comes at the cost of camera time.

Update: Cooler heads have prevailed. “Steve Scalise will not be participating in the televised Fox News event with speaker candidates, I’m told,” CNN’s Melanie Zanona reported. “Another source familiar tells me that Scalise and Jordan talked and agreed it wouldn’t be wise. The forum is off.”